[ubuntu] X-Fi Working w/out ALSA or OSS?

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Creative X-Fi Platinum
After installing Ubuntu 9.10, there was no sound.
I followed the OSS documentation:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound
As soon as I removed PulseAudio, I noticed I was getting system sounds (from pressing delete in terminal). I continued with the guide and backlisted/removed ALSA and the sounds still worked. As soon as I installed OSS, there was no sound again. I tried both the DEB and the Murcurial source and no luck.
I removed OSS with...
Code:
sudo apt-get remove oss-linux
...and sounds started working again.
So now I'm confused... I've got sound, but I don't have OSS or ALSA installed. It's not a big deal now, but later I'll want to play with the sound driver and I may not even have one.
Does anybody know what to do?
(Hardware)